


take me with him

by ohstucky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, spoilers for Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 18:37:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14478747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohstucky/pseuds/ohstucky
Summary: They were reaching for each other; Steve in dawning shock and horror, Bucky stumbling in his direction even as his legs crumbled into nothingness, but it was too slow, too late, and suddenly Bucky wasn't there at all.





	take me with him

_"Steve?"_

They were reaching for each other; Steve in dawning shock and horror, Bucky stumbling in his direction even as his legs crumbled into nothingness, but it was too slow, too late, and suddenly Bucky wasn't there at all.

Steve doesn't register his legs buckling until his knees hit the ground. Bucky's remains lay at his feet, where his gun had fallen as his body disappeared. Steve reaches to feel the ashes in the grass instinctively, unconsciously, as if every cell in his body knew that something was missing. He'd realised long ago that the need for Bucky was always there, under his skin, at the forefront of his mind, the centre of his heart and soul, encoded in his DNA like a gene created especially for the both of them.

He feels the bile rising in his throat at the sheer _unfairness_ of it all. But Steve had stopped thinking of the universe as anything even resembling fair when it first took Bucky from him. For the first time in nearly a century, things had been looking up for Bucky. After 70 years of enduring brainwashing and torture and a thousand fates worse than death, he was finally recovering. Shuri, ever the inexplicable genius, had removed the poison they had put in his mind, and replaced the arm that they had cruelly fused into his very sinew. Finally, finally, he had a chance to recover.

But then the end of the world had come. Steve's chest constricts as he remembers Bucky saying those words in a voice that sounded like coming home, with a smile he hadn't seen since the 40s, reminiscent of cigarette smoke and fairs and some blushing girl's perfume, the kind of smile Steve would've moved heaven and earth to see again. And now it looked like he would have to do just that, bring them closer together so that he could see Bucky smiling down on him like the guardian angel he always had been. Steve had never known how to live without Bucky. Time had seemed to be the only thing that was on his side for so long, but even that had deserted him now. Every fibre of his being screams for just one more: one more smile, one more laugh, one more touch... one more kiss. He hadn't ever been able to get enough of Bucky.

But Bucky was gone. He'd disappeared right in front of him and there was nothing left, nothing he could do, nobody left for him- nothing to live for.

And all Steve can hear is the same words over and over again, the words that echoed in his head when Bucky fell, when he found him and lost him again in one agonising minute, when he watched him force himself back into his frozen sleep; all the times he'd lost him:

_please, please, just take me with him._

**Author's Note:**

> cried writing this one too


End file.
